From Manti Te'o and His Dead Girlfriend to Muhammad Ali on MNF to Chinese Running Backs: The Best Sports Hoaxes Ever

The history of sports is filled with hoaxes, going back to when Abner Doubleday invented baseball. This latest Manti Te’o story is crazy, and nothing exactly like it has ever happened. People, though, have been perpetrating lies and playing jokes for any number of reasons, from having fun, to gaining an advantage, to notoriety, to who knows what, for a long time. Before twitter, cell phones and facebook, there were rotary phones and telegrams and good old fashioned leg work.

People can be cruel and try to play on athlete’s emotions, like when someone called in that Michael Jordan’s mom was sick. The only difference between that and forty years earlier is that research is more readily available. Someone tried that on Cubs pitcher Don Kaiser, telegramming him that his mother was dying right before he took the mound. It didn’t faze him, because his mother was already dead.

Perhaps the best and funniest hoax was the Plainfield Teacher’s College Comets in 1941. If you think accepting a story of an athlete’s girlfriend is bad, well, at least it wasn’t publishing scores for a school that didn’t exist. Stockbroker Morris Newburger began phoning in scores for the school, coached by “Hurry Up” Hoblitzel, to the New York Times. Plainfield Teacher’s College was dominating the competition, led by star running back Johnny “The Celestial Comet” Chung, who only ate rice to keep going strong. The fictional Chung, it is noted in other papers, was the subject of at least one feature by a New York writer. So while Lennay Kekua may not be real, at least Manti Te’o is. We think.